ArticlePloS one2021
Visual preference for social vs. non-social images in young children with autism spectrum disorders. An eye tracking study.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Diagnostic Potential of Eye Tracking to Detect Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children: A Systematic Review.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled it
- Automatic measurement of social gaze during naturalistic conversations in autism.Journal of psychiatric research · 2026Article
- Home-based eye tracking for early autism screening: a scoping review of approaches, evidence, and implementation challenges.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Preserved and non-preserved social attentional processes in Autism and developmental language disorder at early ages.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Social Attention in Electronic Picture Books with Social Scenes for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Insights from Eye-Tracking Studies.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Autistic Individuals Are Flexible with Physical and Emotion Gradable Adjectives.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Eye-Tracking as a Screening Tool in the Early Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
- From Gaze to Interaction: Links Between Visual Attention, Facial Expression Identification, and Behavior of Children Diagnosed with ASD or Typically Developing Children with an Assistance Dog.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Autism-like atypical face processing inScience advances · 2025Article
- Using explainable machine learning and eye-tracking for diagnosing autism spectrum and developmental language disorders in social attention tasks.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Prefrontal Cortex Responses to Social Video Stimuli in Young Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Attention toward Social and Non-Social Stimuli in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Paired Preference Eye-Tracking Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Validation of the Edited Tromsø Infant Faces Database (E-TIF): A study on differences in the processing of children's emotional expressions.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- How Do Children and Adolescents with ASD Look at Animals? A Scoping Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Identification of diagnostic markers for ASD: a restrictive interest analysis based on EEG combined with eye tracking.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Autism interest intensity in early childhood associates with executive functioning but not reward sensitivity or anxiety symptoms.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2022Article
- Large scale validation of an early-age eye-tracking biomarker of an autism spectrum disorder subtype.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Emotion Facial Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study of the Impact of Service Dogs.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Attention to Face as a Predictor of Developmental Change and Treatment Outcome in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.Biomedicines · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are associated to social attention (SA) impairments. A gaze bias to non-social objects over faces has been proposed as an early marker of ASD. This bias may be related to the concomitant circumscribed interests (CI), which question the role of competing objects in this atypical visual behavior. The aim of this study was to compare visual attention patterns to social and non-social images in young children with ASD and matched typical controls (N = 36; age range 41-73 months) assessing the role of emotion in facial stimuli and the type of competing object. A paired preference task was designed pairing happy, angry, and neutral faces with two types of objects (related or not related to autism CI). Eye tracking data were collected, and three indexes were considered as dependent variables: prioritization (attentional orientation), preference, and duration (sustained attention). Results showed that both groups had similar visual pattern to faces (prioritization, more attention and longer visits to faces paired with objects non-related to their CI); however, the ASD group attended to faces significantly less than controls. Children with ASD showed an emotional bias (late orientation to angry faces and typical preference for happy faces). Finally, objects related to their CI captured attention in both groups, significantly reducing SA in children with ASD. Atypical SA is present in young children with ASD regardless the competing non-social object. Identifying strengths and difficulties in SA in this population may have substantial repercussion for early diagnosis, intervention, and ultimately prognosis.
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Registered trials
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